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Widgets! Get your Widgets!

DECEMBER 16, 2008
Is there anything better than drawing robots?

I dabble in robot doodles, but my sketches pitched for clients end up being just that- they never seem to make it to final art. This assignment for the New York Times proved to be the perfect fit.The illustrations are for the launch page of a new service called TimesWidgets.
When I took on this project, a widget factory was suggested by the client. So I jumped in and started drawing out a low-tech version of a high-tech app. Tiny robots cutting up large volumes of articles and reassembling information into tiny, perfect, colorful widgets.
If you want a great new widget, go over to New York Times and build your own. I worked with Heena Ko on this one closely. There was a lot of back and forth to get things right.
 
Thumbnail
Here is the evolution of the main drawing, from sketches to finish.
This needed some simplification - too much going on overhead. We also needed to balance the composition.
Approved sketch
This one had a background tone that was dropped. My initial color palette was a bit too rusty. We decided on more vibrant tones.
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